Support for NixOS stable (23.11)

[crabdancing]

As it currently stands, using Jovian-NixOS for a system generally means I have to use whatever unstable version is pinned. This is a problem because the unstable version of NixOS is... unstable. The ability to use Jovian on the stable version would be great!

[K900]

Unstable isn't really unstable as in buggy, it's unstable as in may contain breaking changes. The reason we don't support 23.11 is that pretty much everyone is running unstable, and you can see from the git history that regressions are very rare.

[crabdancing]

My experience is that my Jovian Steamdeck config has a lot more bugs and glitches than my other NixOS systems. E.g., KDE stuff seems to be breaking more.

[K900]

Then please file issues for that.

[crabdancing]

Filing issues will only MAYBE fix those specific issues. Otherwise there would be no distinction between stable and unstable, no?

Anyways, the reason I haven't is because they're probabilistic bugs that only crop up under specific circumstances, and I literally do not know what to tell them. But in the meantime, it would be nice is my work devices didn't have to use unstable. :P

[crabdancing]

Yeah, like today I found out it was broken:

building the system configuration...
error:
       … while calling the 'seq' builtin

         at /nix/store/8zgn73r04imfsn9sjynvp0nkkwppxngf-source/lib/modules.nix:322:18:

          321|         options = checked options;
          322|         config = checked (removeAttrs config [ "_module" ]);
             |                  ^
          323|         _module = checked (config._module);

       … while calling the 'throw' builtin

         at /nix/store/8zgn73r04imfsn9sjynvp0nkkwppxngf-source/lib/modules.nix:298:18:

          297|                     ''
          298|             else throw baseMsg
             |                  ^
          299|         else null;

       error: The option `services.displayManager' does not exist. Definition values:
       - In `/nix/store/ixc48z15n22d4kjrgx858pfbdsbs6ap6-source/modules/steam/autostart.nix':
           {
             _type = "if";
             condition = true;
             content = {
               _type = "if";
           ...

This the sort of thing that happens all the time in my experience.

[K900]

Yes, because again, we only support and test unstable. I've converted this issue into a discussion, because I don't think we have the bandwidth to support two branches of NixOS as it stands.

[radioaddition]

is there perhaps some workaround so that jovian will use unstable stuff while everything else is on stable?

[K900]

No, that's not practical.

[crabdancing]

Kind of?

Every six months, in time with the release cycle, there is a magical time at which nixos-unstable effectively is stable. I personally just pin Jovian-NixOS to the the version from that time, and only update Jovian-NixOS on a six month cycle. It sucks, but whatever. :P

[K900]

Please do not do that. There's been security fixes since that time.

[crabdancing]

Please do not do that. There's been security fixes since that time.

In Jovian-NixOS or in upstream nixpkgs?

[K900]

Both.